I recently saw an interesting request from a small business owner. He had received some bad publicity, and it was showing up in Google before his own business or personal info. He wanted help to push his bad stuff off the first page.

I give the business owner a B+ for understanding the importance of reputation management. All it takes is one bad review or article written about you to turn away potential customers.

Word of mouth is powerful, but it works both ways. Upset or wrong a customer and chances are pretty good they are going to tell someone they know about it. Chances are also pretty good, in this increasingly tech savvy culture, that the customer is going to go online and write about it on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.

The cat is already out of the bag for the small business owner. His only recourse now is to either remedy the situation with the customer and try and get a follow up review, or go on a PR campaign to blitz the web with positive or neutral information to push down the negative.

So what’s the solution? Be proactive not reactive.

Engage your customers. Ask them to review you online. Make it easy for them to talk about you.  Blogs, Google and Yahoo reviews, Yelp, Facebook, and more… Make sure your company is present in the most popular places your customer visits. Then, actively get your customers to talk about you. There are lots of ways, from online methods like email blasts and surveys, to off line methods like a simple thank you card with a note asking for a review.

Building up a steady supply of positive reviews will buffer you against the inevitable upset customer. Out of a dozens (hopefully hundreds) of reviews, one or two negative ones don’t seem so bad.

So start getting your customers to talk about you, otherwise the web will be filled with only negative remarks about you.